Maria Butina, the Russian graduate student who pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to fail to register as a foreign agent, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison. She already has served nine months in jail awaiting trial. Prosecutors had accused Butina of a wide array of crimes, in addition to using sex to collect information, none of which was true, and they had to withdraw numerous accusations against her. Still, she gets prison time when American co-conspirators will sleep in their own beds tonight. And that's despite the fact that she cooperated with prosecutors. Sputnik News analyst Nicole Roussell, who attended today's sentencing hearing, joins the show.
Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden yesterday apologized to law professor Anita Hill for his treatment of Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings that he chaired in 1991. Well, he didn't really apologize. He said that he "regretted what she had to endure." Hill responded that she was deeply unsatisfied with the statement and added that she was troubled by recent reports that Biden has repeatedly touched women in a way that made them feel uncomfortable. Brian and John speak with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.
Donald Trump took questions from the press today before departing to the NRA convention, giving a series of bizarre answers on a wide range of topics. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist at www.rall.com, joins the show.
NSA has is recommending the cancellation one of it's most controversial collection program, the wholesale gathering of metadata from American citizens. The program was initially revealed by Edward Snowden and ruled illegal in 2015 unless it conformed with the USA Freedom Act. But does the NSA still retain vast spying operations targeting the public? Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director who became a legendary national security whistleblower, joins Brian and John.
It's Friday! So it's time for the week's worst and most misleading headlines. Brian and John speak with Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose critiques of the mainstream media have been a feature of his site Left I on the News and on twitter @leftiblog, and Sputnik producer Nicole Roussell.
Friday is Loud & Clear's weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on Joe Biden's presidential campaign announcement, efforts by the Trump white house to illegally seize the Venezuelan embassy in D.C. and efforts by US peace activists to prevent this illegal seizure, the summit between North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin, The U.S. economic growth report and more. Walter Smolarek, Loud & Clear producer and Sputnik News analyst, joins the show.
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